Simplified
by EbonyEnigma
Summary: This is a Drarry fic. Sue me (actually, sue Mancer-it's all your fault, Jafar!). It's set during the Battle of Hogwarts in the Deathly Hallows.


Hello again! _Now_ do you like my hat?

I simultaneously hate and love **Mancer** right now, because she has forced me to ship Drarry. Seriously. She made a Snowbaz connection. It was emotional compulsion. This does not follow canon.

I own far too many scarves, but not these characters.

Draco remembered when he was young.

He remembered when he'd believed his mother's lies about the cuts on her wrists and the bruises on her back, remembered when the red stains on the baseboard in the room with the long table were tomato sauce, remembered when his father's cane leaned on the umbrella stand and it had been the worst weapon in the world.

He remembered when the men and women in the black cloaks had been constantly around, remembered their greasy hair and yellowed teeth and their spit that turned into bad, bad words coiling in the air and landing, wet and despicable, on the floor.

He used every one of those words now, and many more, words he had learned in darkened corners of the Slytherin common room and in other rooms with long black tables and tomato stains on their baseboards.

He used every one of those words because he couldn't understand what was happening to him-no, what had _happened_ to him.

Draco remembered when he was young.

He remembered when he had wanted to be like his father, and at the same time not; remembered when he wanted to command attention in the same way, but not; remembered when he wanted people to love him instead of fear him.

But now, as Draco looked around himself, at the faces of those fighting alongside him, men and women in black cloaks, with their greasy hair and their yellowed teeth, he saw no love. He saw no fear. Instead, he saw another emotion, something he didn't understand, like anger, but…empty.

Like Voldemort wasn't the only one who had sacrificed his humanity, sacrificed his _soul_ , for this.

He wasn't.

But he had been the only one of them to do it knowingly.

But Draco had not lost it, not yet.

Because Draco remembered when he was young.

He remembered seeing a black-haired boy with a too-serious face, standing below him on a stairway.

He had had a soul then.

He remembered stealing a red orb just to get the attention of someone special. He remembered talking about Mudbloods just to get a look, a glance, from those green eyes, even narrowed in hate, because he knew that was all he would get.

Draco knew that hate was all his heart would ever get.

He had had a soul then, and later, when he dressed up as a Dementor to feel Potter's magic wash over him, and later, when he broke the boy's nose to give him an inkling of how it felt to have your heart smashed to pieces every day.

It had always been there.

It had been there the year before, when he had panicked in a bathroom and Potter had cursed him, and he had bled his heart's blood onto the floor of the bathroom.

Because this was what Potter did to him, wasn't it? He forced him to hold it in, to hold his heart, hot and straining, between his teeth, until his jaw gave out and he spat pure, pure blood to the sky. Because what good had it ever done him anyway? What good had it ever done anyone? Multitudes dead for blood that was all the same color, Draco knew it was because he could see it pouring in rivulets over broken bodies, pure as mud, the two mixing beneath the corpses, all red, all _red_ , all _so red._

And Merlin, if Potter would just _die_ , Draco could finally let go of his soul. Maybe that would fix everything, amputating the rotten piece.

"Malfoy!"

Draco turned, black cloak whistling around his feet, greasy hair flopping in his eyes. The transformation was nearly complete. He thought idly, _Will my teeth would turn yellow on their own, or will I have to work for it?_

Then he stopped thinking at all.

Because there was Harry Potter, running toward him, bloody and dirty and still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life.

"Malfoy!"

"Potter," Draco greeted. His palms were beginning to sweat. He considered casting _Tergeo,_ but decided that that would just be unbelievably weird.

"Draco. I have to tell you something."

His heart stopped moving, then redoubled its efforts to climb out from behind his bicuspids. He tried to speak without opening his mouth. "What is it?"

In response, Potter grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in.

Everything stopped.

There were no Death Eaters, no greasy hair and black cloaks, no incredulous Muggle-borns staring as Harry Potter kissed Draco Malfoy in the middle of a battle in which they were supposed to be fighting each other.

Because really, when had The Chosen One ever done what he was _supposed_ to do?

Then Potter pulled away, and they kept fighting, and only they knew what the kiss had really meant: Malfoy had decided that his allegiance was not to his cloak and teeth and blood, but to his heart. Nothing had changed between them. Not really. They had just simplified the equation.

But later, when they were all sitting in the Great Hall, Potter took his hand and laced their fingers together.

And Draco didn't have to hold himself back anymore, even if the very thing he wanted was so close, close enough that he could reach out and just touch it.

Because now, Harry Potter was reaching for _him._


End file.
